


Hands Curled Like Talons

by Hinn_Raven



Series: A Different Game [8]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Court of Owls, Dark, Gen, Kidnapping, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Character Death, Stephanie Brown is Red Hood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-07-13 15:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16021109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: Stephanie Brown never believed in the Court of Owls. Not until they came for her and everything she cared about.The Court of Owls has cared about Stephanie Brown ever since she died. And now, they're out to see how far they can push the Red Hood.





	1. A Ghost, a Bane

**Author's Note:**

> This entry has been a long time coming. In some ways, it's a finale. And so, of course, it's time to finally give this series the multi-chapter adventure it deserves to close it out. Stephanie Brown as the Red Hood vs the Court of Owls... who's ready? 
> 
> This fic is dedicated to everyone who continues to love this universe, and especially to fandomnerd, who has always supported this unniverse, and sroloc_elbisivni, who has beta-d most of this universe.

**_“Beware The Court of Owls,_ **

**_That watches all the time,_ **

**_Ruling Gotham from a shadow perch,_ **

**_Behind granite and lime._ **

**_They watch you at your hearth,_ **

**_They watch you in your bed,_ **

**_Speak not a whispered word of them_ **

**_Or they'll send The Talon for your head.”_ **

* * *

Nell Little was twelve years old when her mother took her to see _Swan Lake_. It had been amazing; Nell had loved to see the dancers move and listen to the music swell and fall.

On their way home, there was a man with a knife.

Nell’s mother threw her arms out, trying to protect her, but the man moved forward anyways, the knife slashing through the air.

Her mother fell to the ground, and there was blood.

Nell screamed.

And then…

There was the _Hood_.

She was faster than anyone Nell had ever seen; more graceful than the dancers. She was tall and broad and radiated strength in a way that no one Nell had ever known did.

It took three moves to take down the man with the knife, and then she was by Nell’s side, her gloved fingers at her mother’s throat, looking for a pulse.

“Where’s her cell phone?” She asked Nell. Her voice was steady, filtered by the mask. “We’ll need an ambulance.”

After that everything was a blur.

But Nell remembered this; the Hood stayed with her until the ambulance arrived.

Foster care wasn’t terrible, not like it was on TV. But it wasn’t… right. Nell wanted her _mom_. She didn’t want this strange house with too many people and the food that tasted funny. She didn’t belong here. It wasn’t home.

She lasted two days before she ran away.

Living on the streets was harder than the books made it sound, but she refused to go back. She scrapped and stole and begged and watched.

She looked to the sky, and saw the Bat Signal shining brightly, and she gritted her teeth, and kept searching for the Red Hood.

But in the end, the Red Hood found her first.

Up close, the Red Hood looked more human. Her helmet was a smooth red dome with slits for her breathing and holes around her eyes that only showed a domino mask beneath. She wore a leather jacket and heavy armor and there were guns strapped to her thighs and knives in holsters at her hips.

“I remember you. Nell, right?”

“Yes.” Nell felt very small and very scared, but more important than that was the racing of her heart and the set of her teeth.

“I want to help you.”

“I want to fight.”

She didn’t understand then why the Red Hood said yes.

It wouldn’t be until the first time she took off her helmet, allowing short blonde hair and dark blue eyes to be revealed, and introduced herself as Stephanie Brown, that Nell would understand.

* * *

 

When Stephanie Brown had died, she had been seventeen years old and her life had been cracked open for the entire world to see. In some ways, her being an outsider had served Bruce Wayne. There was no connection between him and this girl who had died, who was buried by her mother and mourned by the city.

Bruce Wayne had not attended the funeral. He had sent flowers, he visited afterwards, but he did not go to the funeral.

If one was to ask Stephanie Brown, she would say that it was because he did not care.

If one was to ask Bruce Wayne, he would say that someone might have noticed and questioned why Bruce Wayne wept for Robin.

Stephanie Brown had reason to question Bruce Wayne’s affection.

But Bruce Wayne had reason to be cautious.

The Court of Owls, like many others, ripped through Stephanie Brown’s life with gluttonous, murderous intent. They seized upon medical files, school records, childhood photographs, police reports. Her photograph was pasted upon their walls, her face analyzed, her autopsy reveled in.

They found references to a child, sent away long ago, but the Oracle had been careful. The child could not be found, and they abandoned that angle, muttering cruel names about the young girl and the decisions she had made.

They found ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends, they traced out the life of a pretty girl who had been adventurous and affectionate. They tracked phone calls and hospital records, but for all their efforts, they could not find the Batman or his apprentices through the fallen Robin. 

The Court grumbled; they had so hoped that this girl who had died for the Bat would lead to his downfall. But they were adaptable, they were clever. They were getting better and better at hiding their operations from the Bat’s clever gaze. Soon, he would slip, and they and their Talons would descend upon him.

Years passed, and the Bat remained. The Court struggled as his apprentices grew and became more skilled. They bolstered the Black Mask in private, destroying trial after trial, making sure he slipped through the cracks every time the Bat descended upon him, funding other criminals to distract from him on occasion.

The Mask thought he ruled Gotham. It was a pretty illusion, the Court whispered to themselves. Nothing more. The Court had spun themselves into history, rewriting it as they went. They had convinced the world that they were as old as the city, that they had agents everywhere, that their reach was all powerful and that their gaze was all knowing. They thrived on this fear, flourishing in the shadows.

Politicians who opposed them were slaughtered as examples, and in private, the city whispered and feared. Batman hunted the killers, but he was chasing shadows. No one would admit that they believed in the Court, no one would confess to seeing a Talon.

All lived in fear of waking up one morning to a feather on their pillow and their children missing from their beds.

The Court stole the children of their enemies, made them weapons, and stole their hearts. Years later, the children would kill the parents, and be named Talon. There was a cleanness, a symmetry to the affair that the Court liked. It was a prolonged, slow death. Many tried to run. But the Court was patient, and willing to send their Talons far from home for their initiation.

A historian published a book claiming that the Court had been around since colonizers had come to the New World. The Court of Owls, she proclaimed, was the legacy of Gotham. Officially, it was mocked. But privately, Gotham read, and believed, and the Court grew stronger. 

And then had come the Red Hood.

She had appeared out of nowhere, dangerous and feral, unlike most criminals, even in Gotham. She paid no dues, owed allegiance to no one, and was all the more dangerous for it. She ripped her way through Gotham in a positive slaughter, upending plans upon plans, of the Court of Owls and everyone else who she encountered. The Court did not know who she was, they did not control her, and they feared her.

“Let the Bat handle her,” they whispered to each other, as she carved out a piece of territory for herself. “Let the Bat handle her.”

She distracted the Bat from their operations better than the Mask ever had, and they could not figure out why. The Court recircled, and began to draw up new plans, centered around her as the ruler of the streets.

And then she vanished. The Mask went to jail. And the Gotham underworld revolted.

There was no trial for the Red Hood. No one knew where she had gone, or what had happened. She was gone for months upon months, her people upended in the chaos. Petty crime lords scrambled for territory, gangs defaulted to ancient patterns, villains played their games.

But one day she was back and seized control again. Not as completely, not as utterly, but she was back, and killing, and running from the Bats.

The Court sighed in relief and resumed their activities. She was their plan now, and could no longer upend their worlds or their plots.  

The Bat died, and the Court stirred, tentatively reaching out, to seek if there is weakness to be exploited in this gap.

But the apprentices exploded outwards, until it felt like there were more of them than ever, rushing to fill the gap that their patriarch had left behind. There were Bats upon Bats, and there was chaos in their wakes.

There was work to be done, in the cracks. The children were still learning, they were struggling to fill new roles. The Court did their work, still in the shadows, whispering to each other. They bought politicians and intimidated police and left feathers on pillows, trying to grip Gotham City as tightly as they dared.

But it was all moot. The Bats were not invincible, but they were nearly impossible to strike at. There always seemed to be more of them, and new alliances were being forged. The Red Hood fell into the fold, a shock to the Court, who had counted on her for her chaos for so long. Catwoman, the Riddler, and there were rumors that even Hush could no longer be trusted. The Court could not afford a direct strike, not when so much was unknown.

And that was when they discovered who the Red Hood was.

They had known where the Red Hood lived for ages now. She was clever, she hid herself well, but the Court had their fingers in her organization. It gave them a leg up on the Oracle and the Bats.

But now an ally of the Bats, the Red Hood did not fear being watched as much and got careless.

Their Talon brought them a photo of a face.

Short, blonde hair, streaked with gel and sweat, a scarred face, a broken nose, and wary, tired eyes, a deep and dark blue.

The Court whispered, because it could not be the girl they remembered; the one with long, gentle waves of golden hair, with the laugh that had danced through alleys, the girl Robin, the Spoiler, the one whose name they all knew.

 _Stephanie Brown_.

The Court stirred.

The Court began to plan, amongst themselves.

Another Talon reported back, another photograph in hand.

Nell Little, a girl who was to have been a Talon, who had disappeared from their grasp, into the darkness of Gotham. Their man had failed to kill her mother, had failed to capture the child, and instead had been found dead, and the mother in a hospital in a coma, and the child bouncing around in foster care, before vanishing between the cracks in society which Gotham flourished within. She was not gone, not lost, not dead, but was instead under the protection of Stephanie Brown, of the Red Hood.

“Look at her,” the Court whispered, looming over photographs of Scarlet fighting, searching for proof that they had been right in selecting her to be a Talon. “She is skilled, the little red riding hood.”

They laughed amongst themselves in their own, cruel way, and they planned and plotted and schemed.

And just when they were ready to strike, the Bat himself returned from the dead, and the Court _screeched_.

* * *

 

Stephanie Brown knew who and what she was.

She was the Robin who died, she was Spoiler the failure, she was a ghost that haunted the Bat Family, she was the Red Hood, she was a killer, she was the twisted memory of a girl who they had once loved, she was a monster, she was the foster mother to Nell Little, she was best friends with Cassandra Cain, and she was Bruce Wayne’s fears personified.

She leaned against the wall in the Cave. She’d left her helmet by the motorcycle she had ridden into the Cave, a compromise with the others, who were always trying to get her to leave behind the twisted visage of the Joker and embrace something else entirely.

They didn’t understand. This was who she _was_ , now. Spoiler had been a child, full of anger and joy in equal parts. She couldn’t go back to that, any more than she could rip the scars from her own face. Why claim a new title, when anyone would know it was her? They did not understand. It wasn’t the _name_ that bothered them, it wasn’t the guns or the violence or the bloody history that the name carried.

It was _her_ , they minded, because she did not belong.

Even Cass didn’t quite understand that, although she was closer to comprehension than the others. She had offered Stephanie instead a Bat Symbol to emblazon on her chest, to mark her as one of them.

Steph had turned it down. There was no need to corrupt the symbol further, to taint it with herself. Better that no one to realize how deep her connection to the Bats ran. She kept to herself, a reluctant ally, a distant member of the clan.

It was better that way.

Nell and Damian were absent; Steph and Dick had agreed to let the two of them patrol with their new ally, the metahuman “Abuse.” If it weren’t for Oracle monitoring them, Steph would be more nervous, but the three of them were a formidable team in the making. It made Steph’s heart twist in her chest, thinking about how the three of them laughed and bantered and fought side by side, reminding her of the way things had been, before Steph’s mistakes had gotten her killed.

“What’s this about, Bruce?” She asked. She wasn’t sure why he wanted to see her; the two of them had reached the most tentative of accords, strained thin whenever it was tested, threatening to snap at all times. The blood between them was sour and stale, despite how much, in their heart of hearts, they both wanted it to not be that way.

Bruce Wayne had left a mark on her face and scars on her heart. The Red Hood had left no marks on Batman’s skin, but every breath she took tore through his very soul, and they both knew it. She was his ghost and he was her bane, and perhaps that was all they could be. They had once been Batman and Robin. She had poured her trust and her affection and her loyalty out to him, and he had taken it all, and he had not managed to return it in time to save her.

And now years had passed. They had both died, and been reborn, but still he could never understand her. He had not clawed his way out of his grave, screaming for people who weren’t coming, would _never come_ , couldn’t come, because they _couldn’t know_. He had died in honor and glory in battle, not the slow, dishonorable death afforded to the discarded body of a victim.

The two of them stood on opposite sides of a cave, where she had once embraced him, wearing red and green and yellow, and they looked at each other, and both had hearts that were heavy with the past.

“I have a question for you,” he said, as aware as she was that any conversation between the two of them was dancing on the edge of a knife, ready to sever what little healing and trust had been built. “I’ve been hearing chatter, about an organization planning to move against you.”

She blinked. “Me specifically?” It was not entirely a surprise; she had left many corpses behind her, widows and orphans and the wounded, and had left half of the criminals in Gotham shrieking for her blood after her betrayal when she had fallen in line.

“Yes. With your permission, perhaps Nell could relocate to the Manor for a few days, until we’re sure that they haven’t determined your location?” He didn’t say that the offer was open to her too. She had woken up in a pleasant, purple room once after she had been knocked unconscious on a patrol. It had taken effort not to rip the place to shreds.

There was a room, in Bruce Wayne’s house for the prodigal child, but she wouldn’t take it.

She nodded. “Do we have a name?” Her fingers itched. She missed her guns, in moments like this, when her family—when _Nell—_ was threatened. She had switched them out for weighed batons, for brass knuckles, for tasers, and was still brutal and dangerous for it, but there was a permanence that she missed.

“Tell me,” Bruce said instead of answering her question, sitting down in the great chair by the computer. It always felt like a throne, and Steph felt her back straighten as she stood in front of him, like a knight who had been summoned by some great and distant king. “What do you know about the Court of Owls?”

Stephanie Brown blinked, and felt a laugh build up in her chest, hysteric and confused.

“Beware The Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadow perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed, speak not a whispered word of them, or they'll send The Talon for your head,” Steph rattled off, the old children’s rhyme falling out of her mouth.

She had sang that song while skipping rope on the streets, twisting and dancing and chanting as the plastic had slapped the concrete, her pigtails bobbing in time with her.

It was a nursery rhyme from younger, more innocent days.

“Yes,” Bruce said, his fingers pressing together, imposing in his might. She wondered if he knew how he looked. Not even human, but something grander and bigger than any mere human could ever hope to be.

When she had been a child she had despaired ever being able to earn his approval, his affection.

Now, she had long since given up on both of those things, because she was not worthy. Perhaps he had always been right about her. If she had listened, in those days, would she have never died? Would she be happy, a student in college somewhere, without scars on her fingers and the never fading taste of blood and graveyard dirt?

It did not matter.

“So are they real, or are they using the name?” She could hardly imagine that they were a real entity; a conspiracy of the wealthy and criminal, stretching back into those early days. Or if it was real, she couldn’t imagine it having any real power, beyond being a way for those wealthy and criminal to flaunt their power. Bruce Wayne, ludicrously wealthy, would surely have been approached at some point, even if he always was pouring his money into the city, into projects, into people.

Wealthy people always needed to brag. There would have been feather necklaces at society events or painted into mayoral portraits. They would have _known_ if something like that had been flourishing in Gotham City for centuries… right?

“I don’t know. But I’ll find out. And we’ll keep… Nell. We’ll keep Nell safe.” For a moment, the illusion shattered, and Stephanie could see the grey in his hair, the bags under his eyes, and see the weight of the city, of the family, on his shoulders.

In her younger days, seeing him like that would have sent her running towards him, throwing an arm over his shoulder and cracking a joke, trying to take his mind off everything. That had been her job, even before she had been Robin. She had appointed herself to that role, trying to bring a light to that darkness, to try to remind him that although the world was horrible, they could fight back.

She could not do that anymore, because she knew the world to be far worse than she had ever known, and she no longer believed it could be saved, not really.

Now, it made her want to turn and run away, this reminder of how fallible and human he was. She preferred it when he was a statue, untouchable and unbeatable. It was when he was human that she was reminded that things did not have to be the way that they were, a reminder that she was the product of his mistakes, that she had died, not for a symbol, but for a man.

Steph nodded, running her fingers down the zipper of her jacket as she thought, trying to hide all of this from him. Even now, she always feared he saw too much, and judged her for it. For her black heart, for her fears, for the fact that she had not yet overcome the instinct to kill. That he would, one day, realize that she was beyond redemption, and the Batcave would be once again closed to her, no matter that she now knew how to break in.

She was in her twenties, and she still longed for his approval, and she hated herself for that masochism, for how she had never learned her lesson, even though it had been learned with blood.  

“I’ll go get her,” Steph said, instead of confessing any of this to Bruce Wayne.

“Very well,” Bruce said, a dismissal from the king of Bats, and Stephanie Brown turned around and went to find Nell Little, telling herself she wasn’t running away.  

* * *

 

Nell Little loved being Scarlet.

Stephanie Brown had once promised her Robin, but she wouldn’t trade Scarlet for the world. The heavy legacy wasn’t something she wanted, not really, even though she knew that Stephanie sometimes wished she could have given it to her. Nell had dreamed of it, yes, and sometimes she had to sigh with envy over Damian or Duke, but she was happy as Scarlet, with her heavy armor and simpler tricks.

Besides, Robin meant more to Damian than it ever could have to her. He said the word “birthright,” but Nell knew what he really meant.

“Belonging.”

Nell already belonged. Nell had Steph. Steph, who paid her mom’s medical bills and never said anything, Steph who was finally letting herself be kind to people other than Tina and the girls or Nell. Steph who screamed at night and wouldn’t talk about it when Nell woke her up, no matter how often Nell plied her with hot chocolate.

Nell belonged, and despite what Steph thought, she knew Steph belonged.

Steph didn’t fit into the ragged hole she had left behind, and it wasn’t her fault for that. Nell didn’t understand everything that had happened, but she knew that everyone was hurting and wishing things could go back to the way they used to be. And maybe Nell was selfish, but she _didn’t_ , because if things had been the way they used to be, she would never have met Steph, never been Scarlet, never been to the Batcave or met Colin and Damian or anything else. She’d never have been to Metropolis and listened through the coms as her mentor kissed Supergirl and she’d never have met Batman or known about Oracle…

Her Mom would be gone, and Nell wouldn’t have any of that.

She wouldn’t be on the rooftops tonight.

She ran from rooftop to rooftop, Robin and Abuse by her side, breathing heavily because of running for so long and trying not to laugh at Damian’s angry ranting about some slight that Tim Drake had given.

The Bat Signal shone bright and beautiful in the sky, and Nell Little was on top of the world.

And so when the Talon came for her, it took her completely by surprise.

Nell Little had grown up chanting about the Court of Owls. For her, it had been on hopscotch courts, in speech classes, and as scary stories during sleepovers.

Nothing could have prepared her for the reality of it, for the reality of the Court.

He was tall and dressed in black, and the lenses of his mask were bright yellow, the bottom of it covered in a strange, gasmask like apparatus. He wore a cape fringed with feathers the color of ink, and he carried a sword. Something about him was anachronistic. He moved as if he was uncertain of his place in time, as if he had fallen out of a different story, one of demons… or Talons. He was fast despite the strangeness of his motions and he was strong, and Nell screamed as Colin was thrown from the rooftops with an easy flick of a wrist, Damian jumping after him in order to save him, and she screamed again as he reached for her, and Nell hadn’t been this scared in a very long time.

Not since the alley, the night with her mom.

She had thought she had seen feathers that night too.

But, just like that time, the Red Hood came to save her. A knight in leather and a motorcycle helmet, angry and bitter and broken, but kind deep down, despite what she’d say.

A knuckle, clad in brass, slammed into the face of the hulking, dangerous figure, and then Stephanie Brown was in front of her, gloved hands raised, ready for a fight.

“Run!” Steph yelled over her shoulder, her voice strange and filtered through the helmet like always. Like it had been that first night.

“But—”

“ _Run_! Don’t look back, go _somewhere safe_.” And with that, Stephanie Brown charged the monster, a weighted baton in her hand, a primal shout ripping out of her throat.

And Nell Little did as she was told.

This is the story of a girl in a red hooded cape.

She did exactly what she was told and ran straight home, the safest place she could think of. The home built by Stephanie Brown, with all of its traps and tricks, where Nell Little had a bed with a bright red quilt sewn by Alfred and three kinds of hot cocoa.

And she ran right into a trap.

Once upon a time, there had been a girl who had worn a purple cape, but she had set it aside for green and yellow, and she had done the same.

Nell Little, like Stephanie Brown before her, did what she was told, and paid the price for it.

There was a man waiting for Nell Little in the apartment she shared with Stephanie Brown.

Nell punched him, but she might as well of punched a wall. He was implacable and terrifying, he was unmoving and calm as he approached her.

She couldn’t win this fight.

“Steph!” She yelled, but it was hopeless. Steph was halfway across the city on patrol, not here in the apartment with Nell.

Nell swallowed in fear, and put her fists up, keeping her chin up and planting her feet firmly.

She might not win this fight, but she would make him pay for every inch, for every blow, for whatever else it was that he was going to try.

* * *

 

“They took her,” Steph said, and everything was numb. She hadn’t been this numb since she had crawled her way out of her own grave. She feels catatonic again, and she feels the same urge to run away and curl up in a ball. “I told her to go somewhere safe while I fought that… that thing, and they took her.”

Bruce Wayne placed a hand on her shoulder and she let him, unable to take anything from the gesture, even comfort. He had come the second she had found the first Talon, had followed her to the apartment when they realized where Nell must have gone after the fight. Stephanie Brown had bloodied her knuckles on the first Talon’s face, breaking his mask, but he had thrown himself over the edge of the building, rather than be captured. The police had taken the body away, leaving her without answers.

“You’ll find her,” he promised, and the words felt far away.

She nodded once, then turned to leave.

Stephanie Brown came to a stop a moment later, letting her helmet drop to the floor, as she took in the damage done to her apartment, and letting herself _feel_ it finally. Furniture was smashed, curtains were ripped, and there was glass on the floor from a broken window.

She had taught Nell well, she thought, staring at the chaos, at the damage that she had already seen, but now the damage was being translated into _Nell_. How much had she been hurt? The coffee table had been smashed: had Nell been thrown into it? Had they already killed her? What were they doing to her?

The Black Mask’s laughter echoed in her ears, and she stormed forward towards a handful of loose feathers, which Nell must have torn out of some part of that ridiculous costume the so-called assassin had worn.

“Stephanie—” Bruce knew what was coming, she realized for a moment, but the calm was _gone_ , and sheer panic replaced it. In her mind, Nell Little had taken her place beneath the Black Mask’s knife, and the fear was all-consuming, toxic, and already she was drowning. It was more effective than fear gas, and she couldn’t pull herself out. 

“They took Nell!” Steph screamed, throwing the feathers at Bruce. Feathers were terrible projectiles; they floated uselessly in the air, falling to the ground slowly, and she screamed and slammed her fist against the door. “They took her,” she repeated. “ _They took her_.”

“Stephanie,” Bruce said. His voice was soft.

“Don’t!” She said. She didn’t even know what she was telling him not to do. Comfort her? Lie to her and say that it would be alright? Touch her again? “I failed her.” There was a ragged edge to her voice, but also an accusation.

 _Just like you failed me_ , she didn’t say, but she didn’t have to. The words filled the room, repeated so often that they were both drowning in the knowledge, the fear that history was about to repeat itself.

“We should go to the cave,” Bruce said. “We can do more for her there.”

He placed the Red Hood helmet in her hands. She blinked down at it, confused.

He hated that thing; had tried to get her to set it aside. One of her spare rooms is piled full of the armor, the weapons, the masks he’d tried to get her to use instead of her own. When he’d done a good job, she repurposed it for Nell, but she had never picked up one of them for herself.

She put it on her head and followed him, unthinking. She was numb once again, lost at sea, afloat in this overwhelming sense of grief. She was a child of Gotham, like Bruce was. She knew how this story went.

Nell might already be lost to her forever.


	2. A City of Collateral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... things got busy, okay? but WE'RE BACK

Stephanie Brown sat in a corner of the Bat Cave, and her hands shook as they lay on her thighs.

The Cave was crowded, packed tightly with vigilantes of all stripes. Cassandra was there, Duke by her side, occasionally turning her eyes towards Steph, as if to make sure that she was still there. Duke had brought Steph a glass of water, an hour ago, and she had drunk it to placate him, like she had eaten the sandwich that Alfred had brought her twenty minutes ago. It was a hollow motion, but it provided them reassurance that she was, in fact, alive.

She did not have the heart to tell them that Talia had once told her that she had been catatonic and still would eat and drink and fight.

Tim was across the room next to a man known as Batwing, with Tam Fox, who he was trying hard to pretend he wasn’t dating around Steph, as a strange form of acknowledgement for the connection that had once existed between them, going over footage of Steph’s apartment, looking for clues.

Dick Grayson and Damian and Colin were standing next to Bruce, arguing about something that Steph probably should care more about than she was.

Barbara Gordon, flanked by Dinah Lance, a woman that Steph remembered dearly from those golden days as Spoiler, but who probably had not spared a thought for Stephanie Brown in years, held court in a corner, speaking on a headset, directing the Justice League and her Birds of Prey, ensuring that the rest of the world did not fall apart, even as Gotham fell into chaos.

There were others in the Cave—Katherine Kane, Selina Kyle and her unfamiliar protégé, Helena Bertinelli, Onyx, a woman with blue hair who she had never seen before, another woman with no face in a blue trench coat, and Jason Todd—but she was numb to all of them. They might as well have been passersby on the street, for all that Stephanie Brown absorbed them.

Perhaps she should be grateful, that so many had rallied when Nell was in danger, even if none of them were here for Nell, and certainly not for her. Bruce and Barbara and maybe even Cass had called them, and they had come flocking, to seek the little lost girl. It was an impressive force, that they had put together, and they stretched out further, into the rest of the world, with them being only the tip of the spear point.

If a force like this had existed, all those years ago, would she have survived those fateful three days at the hands of Roman Sidonis?

Old scars, scars that not even the Lazarus Pit had healed, throbbed with old pain, and she closed her eyes against it, trying her best to stop from shaking until she fell to pieces.

Her very bones felt as if they had been transformed into ice. Goosebumps crawled along the length of her skin, despite the heat that was produced from all of the bodies in one place.

Nell Little was gone, and statistics danced behind Steph’s eyes whenever she blinked. Statistics that told her that Nell was dead. Beyond that was a further dread, a dread that went back to a children’s rhyme that she had chanted in time with the slap of a skipping rope on concrete.

_“Speak not a whispered word of them / Or they'll send The Talon for your head.”_

What could she have done, to bring this tumbling down upon them?

If the Court was real, they had evaded the eyes of the Bats since at least Stephanie Brown’s middle school days. Why had they chosen now to reveal themselves, to risk the wrath of the Batman and all of his followers, to take a single little girl who was under theirs, and more specifically _her_ protection?

“Stephanie?” A familiar voice pulled her out of her reverie, if not her numbness.

Kara Zor-El stood before her, her face a strange expression of concern.

On autopilot, Steph tried for a flirtatious smile, but it felt flat and dull on her face, and only deepened the lines of worry on the other woman’s face.

“Supergirl,” she said. “How’s Metropolis?”

“Better now that you’re not in it,” Kara said. Her eyes were an inhuman shade of blue—Superman and Superboy were the same way. Her hair was a paler blonde than Steph’s had ever been, not quite platinum but not Steph’s golden waves that she had once been so proud of.

She was gorgeous and whole and wonderful and her eyes were full of real worry, despite the dig.

She was everything that Stephanie Brown was not, in short.

* * *

Stephanie Brown was dangerous, and Kara knew this. She had known this since that first night in Metropolis, when she had kissed her. She had known this when Stephanie had pulled out a fistful of Kryptonite and ran away. She had known this when she had come to the Cave, after Bruce Wayne’s death, and found the woman here, tension humming through the air.

Now…

Kara could remember Scarlet. She had been young, and worried for Stephanie Brown, and small. Scarlet had been in Metropolis, that day on the rooftops; that day of fire and kisses that bruised.

And she was missing.

Stephanie Brown met her eyes, and Kara’s heart skipped a beat. Stephanie’s heart beat almost lethargically, but Kara knew better than to be fooled. It was shock, of sorts, and a sort of shock that Kara had seen before.

Nell Little was missing, and Stephanie Brown was going to destroy herself over this.

Kara had been wrong, before. She had been so sure, back in those early days of the truce with the rest of the Bat Family, won after the Battle for the Cowl, that the truce, that peace, that uncomfortable compromise, would shatter into a million pieces, because Stephanie Brown would not accept limitations, would not last long under the shadow of mistrust, under the weight of all of that painful and loaded past.

She had been wrong.

Stephanie Brown, the Red Hood, had stayed. She had stayed when Bruce had returned, she had stayed through thick and thin, through good times and bad…

But none so bad as this.

Stephanie Brown was on the verge of falling apart or exploding, and Kara wasn’t sure which one was more dangerous.

The rest of the room was watching, keeping an eye on her, because she was one of them, even if she didn’t want to be, even if _they_ didn't want her to be. Stephanie Brown, with her messy golden locks, sheered short for convenience, with her scars and her leather jacket, was one of them.

But she might not be, after all of this was said and done.

Stephanie Brown was like fire. She was dangerous and destructive, beautiful and deadly, and she consumed everything around her, whether she meant to or not. If she exploded, it would be outwards, and the collateral could be the entire city… or everyone around her, including Kara.

Kara was not used to being hurt, not here, in this world.

She wasn’t good at staying away from dangerous things.

“Did you see anything?” Stephanie said, her voice surprisingly steady as she met Kara’s eyes.  

“No,” she said. She had spent hours looking, on Barbara’s request. She had scoured Bludhaven too, searching for any hint of these Talons and Owls and especially of Nell Little. “They must have used lead, wherever they took her.”

Stephanie Brown closed her eyes, and took a breath so deep and so long that Kara worried it might shatter her.

“Of course,” she whispered. She pivoted on her heel and stormed up the stairs, throwing her leather jacket off as she went, leaving her helmet behind.

Kara followed her, drawn by some instinct that she could not quite place.

The steps up to the Manor felt longer than usual, dragged on by each beat of Stephanie Brown’s heart. Kara could have raced up them, of course, but she kept pace, staying only a few steps behind Steph, each step just loud enough to let the Bat know that she was here, that she could say something if she wanted to be left alone.

Stephanie said nothing at all, and Kara kept following.

* * *

The Cave had been too small, too full of people, to deal with the explosion that was rattling around in Steph’s ribcage.

There was a room, purple and soft, a room for a child that was never going to come back, a child that had been buried in the ground, and Steph walked towards it, ignoring her silent, Kryptonian companion.

Nell Little was gone, because Stephanie Brown was a failure. She had brought this down upon them, somewhere, somehow. She had angered the Court of Owls, had awoken a fairytale, a nursery rhyme, and now it was war.

How many wars was it now, wars for Gotham, had she soaked her hands in? Her first rampage, her second brutal reign as the Red Hood, the Battle for the Cowl, and now this? A War of Owls, a War for Gotham?

She had brought the sky falling down around them, and surely, eventually, the other Bats would finally admit what they all already knew; that Stephanie Brown was cursed, and outsider to them and their ways, and that she would never be one of them again, if she had ever been in the first place.

The scream that was building in her throat pressed against her lips, threatening to bubble over, but she held herself back, biting her tongue before the taste of blood filled her mouth, and she gagged.

_“Do you think this is a game?”_

“Stephanie?” Kara asked, and Stephanie grabbed the nearest vase and vomited.

The taste was foul but Stephanie gripped the vase with both hands so tightly that she thought it might break, breathing heavily as her shoulders shook, the tears threatening to break loose.

Nell was gone, and Nell was in the enemy hands, and Nell had run right into a trap, and they _weren’t going to find her_.

The vase was taken out of her hands, and a glass of water was pressed into it.

“It’s not your fault, Stephanie,” Kara said, and those alien blue eyes of hers were full of kindness as Steph drank the water.

It was kindness that Steph did not deserve.  

Kara Zor-El had been a convenience, back in Metropolis. A useful team-up to take on the Black Mask’s expanding operations into Metropolis, to try to draw him back in to Gotham, where he felt _safe_ , and where Stephanie could be sure that she could reach him.

The team up had been a convenience, because Kara was bulletproof and didn’t ask too many questions, and everything else that had followed had just been… natural. Kara was beautiful and funny and clever, and Steph hadn’t had a single regret, even if it had ended in literal flames.

Kara didn’t know, not really. She had watched the buildings go up in flames, but she hadn’t seen the true depths of who Stephanie Brown was, or know what she was really capable of. She hadn’t seen her shoot Tim Drake through the leg in order to kill one of the Mask’s men. She hadn’t seen her beat him to a bloody pulp, only stopping because Cassandra Cain had intervened.

She hadn’t seen Stephanie Brown bring down a roof on her and Bruce’s heads, just in the desperate hopes that she might kill the Black Mask with them, not caring if either of them had lived or died, as long as she had gotten her vengeance.

Kara did not understand, even if she thought she did, what exactly Stephanie Brown was.

Maybe none of them did, downstairs.

Stephanie Brown was no hero, was not the girl with a laugh and a purple cloak that had gone into the ground. She was not Robin or Spoiler, she was nothing but the tattered and bitter remnants of that girl, and what was left was a killer, a monster.

She still was the woman who had nearly beaten Tim Drake to death with her hands, because he had dared to take on the weight of her crimes for himself, who had ran away from everyone who had ever loved her for fear of what would happen if she allowed them to see her.

She had pretended for months upon end, trying to be something she wasn’t, trying to create the illusion of someone who could, maybe, be a hero again one day, but now, Nell was missing, and Stephanie was under no pretensions about how this had happened.

“It is,” Steph whispered. “If I hadn’t—”

“Stop that,” Kara said.

“Stop _what_?” Steph threw out her pain towards Kara, sharpening her words like the knives that she no longer used, because Cassandra Cain had asked her to stop, because Cassandra Cain was still trying to build her dead best friend up out of the scraps that was Stephanie Brown. “Stop knowing what I am?”

She stepped closer to Kara, throwing aside the empty glass.

“I’m a killer. I don’t do that anymore, but that doesn’t change what I am.”

“You—”

“ _I can’t bring them back_ ,” Steph snapped. “I came back, but they don’t get to, and maybe that’s good for most of them, but there’s no way that nobody I killed could have changed, could have been better. Why do _I_ get to live and they don’t? Why do _I_ get to change, and they don’t? _Why do I get a second chance, Kara?_ ”

Kara opened her mouth.

“I’m going to get Nell back,” Steph said. “One way, or another. I’m going to get her back. And who knows? Maybe I’ll back down that hole again. Maybe I won’t. But I know that I’m done. After this? I’m done.” She closed her eyes.

“There’s never going to be enough to fix what I did.”

She was never going to be Stephanie Brown, the Girl Wonder, again. She was never going to be young and full of a joy that tumbled outward, boundless, swinging across rooftops. She was never going to be Spoiler again, full of a youthful righteous rage and a fierce and persistent knowledge that she was _helping_ people.

Maybe she had once been that girl, who had been Cassandra Cain’s best friend, Tim Drake’s girlfriend, Bruce Wayne’s Robin, Crystal Brown’s daughter, but she was nothing but a spiteful shadow of that girl. She had taken everything any of them had ever given her and crushed it beneath her feet in the name of her vengeance.

She had been dead for days before they found her body, and she had never forgiven them for that, and the entire city of Gotham had paid, because she had been unable to accept that they had limitations, that they had been unable to avenge her, that they had been too… _good_ to compromise like she had, to put her killer’s skull beneath the barrel of the gun, to take that decision into their own hands.

Stephanie Brown had been unavenged, and so the entire city had paid, because she was selfish and angry, and she would have robbed them of their greatest protectors in the name of her revenge. In her desperation to kill Roman Sidonis, she could have killed Batman, would happily have done so, if it meant that the bastard had just been _dead_.

The girl who was Robin had ran straight into a monster’s arms, believing herself to be helping, and it had been the thing that killed her. Her trust in Batman, her attempt to do right, had killed her, had led to her being six feet beneath the ground and clawing her way up through graveyard dirt.

What was left after the graveyard, after the Lazarus Pit… that wasn’t Spoiler, wasn’t Robin, wasn’t anything that any of them could recognize, not really.

What Stephanie Brown was now, was a killer and a monster, and nothing could ever change that.

When she opened her eyes, Kara was gone, and Stephanie Brown was standing alone in a hallway, with a shattered water glass at her feet.

* * *

The room was full of whispers and the rustling of feathers.

Nell Little kept her eyes tightly shut and kept her breathing even, terrified of giving any hints that she was awake, when she didn’t know where she was.

“She’s old,” one person said.

“Not too old,” another said. “You were older.”

“She fights well.”

“Yes.” A hand, gloved and strange, brushed against Nell’s forehead, and her eyes flew open without her meaning to, but it was only in time to catch the barest hint of a black, eyeless mask and the tail end of a feathered cape.

Nell Little sat upright, and her cape was missing.

There was a room, filled with children, all staring at her with wide, strange eyes.

The room felt like a room in a movie; large and concrete, the sheets thin and scratchy, the blankets grey and worn, the lightbulbs protected by cages.

They had taken her armor and her cape and her mask, leaving her in the tank top and leggings she wore beneath them. At the foot of the bed she was in, lying atop the covers, there was a folded set of clothes; grey and blue in color, the same clothes as the other children wore.

There were five others in the room, one in each of the beds.

They all stared at Nell, but did not get up.

“Hello,” Nell said. “I’m Scarlet.”

The one right across from her looked at her with wide, panicked eyes, and held a finger to her lips.

Nell frowned and got to her feet.

There were no windows, in this room that was not quite a cell. It was small, with the six beds almost pressed against each other, the ceiling just high enough that if Nell stood on her toes and reached, she could not quite reach the caged frame of the lightbulbs. The seam in the wall that marked the door was not quite invisible, and it resisted all of Nell’s attempts to push or pull it open.

A hand wrapped around her wrist, and Nell pulled back, yelling.

All five of the others had followed her, their eyes strange and wide, eerie in their silence.

One of them, a different one than before, pressed a finger to his lips, staring at her with wide, amber eyes.

Nell jerked her arm out of the grip of the girl who had shushed her the first time, glaring at all of them.

“Who are you?”

This time, all five of them pressed their fingers against their lips desperately. The first girl, with tangled hair that might have once been red, but was now dull and limp, pointed at the door, then held her finger up to her lips again.

“They’ll punish me if I keep talking?” Nell guessed.

All five of the others nodded.

They were strange, these children, with their matching clothes and scared eyes. Nell was not quite the oldest of all of them—there was a boy, one who had done nothing to distinguish himself, but whose hair was the longest of any of them, who looked to be her age or a little older.

“Do they punish you?” Nell whispered. If it was just her, she could take it. Steph had taught her to be strong, had given her the tools that she would need to take it. If it was just her, she would scream and batter at the doors and when they came to punish her, she would make them fight for every inch.

But Steph would come for her, and so she wouldn’t risk the others, even though they were strangers, just to make herself feel better.

The others nodded, all of them looking down, and Nell took a deep breath, and nodded.

Relief shining in their faces, the other children took her hands and led her to the bed furthest away from the door.

The smallest of them all—the last boy, who looked to be seven years old, with straw colored curls—climbed beneath the bed, and returned, carefully cradling in his arms a handful of treasures.

There were two feathers, a handful of small steel balls, a shard of mirror, and two equal sized lengths of a wooden pole.

The boy offered Nell these eclectic items; the toys, Nell realized, that they had to play with, in this small room.

Nell, unsure, selected one of the poles, and the girl with limp-red hair took the other one, and enthusiastically raised hers, motioning for Nell to come forward.

The three boys took the balls and feathers and set up a crude game of marbles, while the last girl, the one with black hair and freckles that were fading, took the mirror and sat on the bed, staring at the door.

Nell stared at this scene, unsure of what to make, of these strange children in this strange room, before finally lunging forward with her stick to combat the other girl.

She parried easily, with a fierce grin, and as she grabbed Nell by the wrist to pull her forward, a whisper carried from her closed mouth to Nell’s ear.

“My name is Carrie,” the other girl whispered, and Nell’s eyes widened as she continued to spar, a strange kind of hope kindling in her chest at this tiny sign of rebellion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kara returns! And there's a LOT of cameos!
> 
> Selina Kyle's unfamiliar protégé - Holly Robinson  
> "a woman with blue hair who she had never seen before" - Harper Row  
> "another woman with no face in a blue trench coat" - Renee Montoya 
> 
> Kara meeting Steph again in the Batcave is a reference to their meeting in _A Body Full of Pain_ 's Chapter 8 "I Can't Wait to See You Again." 
> 
> Steph shooting someone through Tim is a reference to _A Body Full of Pain_ Chapter 3: Through Me.


End file.
